This development update will encompass September & October 2021 and goes into detail on the various PKT technology projects.
PKT is an open-source project. All of the PKT blockchain code and the various projects being developed in the ecosystem are managed by contributing community members.
September and October have been milestone months for technology development in the PKT ecosystem. One of the most notable milestones is the PKT x wPKT swap technology called Obeah Bridge (odapp.io) and the first decentralized exchange (DEX) liquidity event. This will be discussed further in the wPKT update. The second major milestone is Lightning Network daemon (LND) integration into PKT Wallet. LND development is an integral part of the AnodeVPN and Anode Mobile Wallet projects. Both wPKT and LND achievements have had long development cycles, but each serves as a powerful reminder that new technologies require methodical persistence to reach utility. LND will give PKT blockchain near infinite transactions per second (tps). While several blockchains like Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) also support Lightning Network functionality, this integration will make PKT tps faster than all other non-lightning enabled blockchains. The teams working on these technologies have been enduring and the quality of their work is both recognized and appreciated.
Also of note, on October 19, 2021, PKT completed its noteworthy 8th decimation. This event reduced the 1 minute block rewards from 1,992 PKT/minute to 1,793 PKT/minute and completed flawlessly. This milestone coincides with ~415m PKT coins burned to date by the Network Steward, amounting to over 12% of the total mined coins, and 6.9% of the 6B total supply. The next decimation will occur in January 2022, on block 1,296,000.
Numerous developments and bug fixes have been ongoing with pktd. One issue that was discovered is when a node is rapidly connecting and disconnecting, it can exhaust the CPU. A patch has been created to ban nodes for rapid connect/disconnect. The reason why nodes were doing this is currently unknown. It could be an attack or just a bug in certain cases. If anyone has experienced their pktd instance rapidly connecting and disconnecting to others, please reach out in the chats.
A few additional bug fixes include the message “cannot find node to sync to” which is now in a branch. Also, almost all features of PKT Wallet have been implemented in PLD (PKT Lightning Daemon). The last remaining feature is wallet locking. Locking is difficult because Lightning Network nodes require access to funds in order to create and update channels. This issue is still being discussed. Lastly, createtransaction now allows the creation of signed OR unsigned transactions based on a flag.
There are two improvements that have been accomplished with regards to the PKT block explorer. The first is the block explorer’s migration to a larger server. The previous server has been retired after handled over 72m lookup requests since the explorer launch in 2019. On October 28, 2021 alone, the machine did over 225,000 http requests, which were almost all database lookups. This volume of requests indicates significant network growth. The second improvement was a fix to a bug that was causing unconfirmed coins to accumulate on people’s addresses over time. This issue has been resolved.
WPKT is now live trading on PancakeSwap. PKT Cash mainnet coins can be swapped from PKT to wPKT or wPKT to PKT via Obeah Bridge (odapp.io).
WPKT was first contemplated approximately 1 year ago. After the peak of the pandemic, in September 2020, Uniswap and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) were gaining visibility with the debut of the Uniswap token (UNI), as well as the launch of PancakeSwap. It was around this time that the idea was introduced in the PKT community to build a cross chain swap so a wPKT token could be traded on a decentralized exchange (DEX).
Around November 2020, an early community member offered a bounty of 20m PKT (worth $40k at the time) if a developer could build wPKT within 2 months. The first developer was not able to complete the project and the bounty was forfeited. In January 2021, BNB began its historic run, as PancakeSwap and DeFi gained further popularity, and founding community member @artrepreneur1 raised private funding from Alex Lightman to build the Obeah Bridge.
Between April 2021 and August 2021 numerous versions of the Obeah Bridge, vault, proofs and website were iterated. The bridge technology functions in a unique way because instead of swapping tokens, wPKT token is a 1:1 pair with the PKT Cash mainnet coin (which is a non-inflatable mined coin supply). This means that custom security protocols and a hot and cold wallet vault needed to be introduced so PKT Cash could be safely swapped. These development choices are well documented in this article. Initially the Obeah Bridge was built for Uniswap. However, due to the high Ethereum gas fees, the wPKT team decided to launch on BSC first.
On September 14, 2021 the Obeah Bridge was opened to the public. This launch provided the first DEX liquidity event for PKT Cash. WPKT also offers two additional features to the PKT project: 1) mobile wallet storage via MetaMask (for wPKT), and 2) the ability to earn an APR by staking wPKT in a liquidity pool. WPKT is an exciting achievement to recognize and celebrate. This milestone has given PKT miners and traders liquidity access, and has introduced thousands of new wallet holders to the project over the past 6 weeks.
The next move is further global market visibility by launching wPKT on Uniswap. The technology for this launch is completed and will coincide with procuring enough Ethereum liquidity for a healthy debut. Bridging between PKT and wPKT currently has a 3.5% bridge fee. However, the bridge between BSC and ETH will have a nominal bridge fee of a fraction of 1%. Beyond bridging into Ethereum, @artrepreneur1 is developing additional swapping capability between wPKT x Polygon (Matic), Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) to name a few.
Where wPKT begins to shine is with regards to utility opportunities across the world of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and DeFi. DApps functionality and smart contract compatibility is now possible in BSC, and once the bridge to Ethereum is launched, PKT Cash will have further exposure to the Ethereum ecosystem.
The AnodeVPN app is currently in a soft alpha phase for testing. Over 84 releases have pushed, with the most current release v0.2.65 posted during the week of October 25, 2021. This is a soft alpha (pre-release), but if you have an Android phone, you can download the app now. AnodeVPN provides a VPN for free with an integrated wallet. The VPN utilizes cjdns keys, so users can have VPN access without needing to provide their name, email or phone number. Forthcoming functionality is the ability to pay for VPN speed using PKT Cash and select from user-rated VPN services worldwide. Many people have offered to test and provide bug reports on either projects.pkt.cash or on the AnodeVPN Github. There are known issues that are being worked through, but all feedback is welcome.
AnodeVPN developers have been integrating the Lightning Network daemon (LND) into PKT Wallet. This work requires each LND RPC to correspond with the associated PKT Wallet command. The following commands are completed: Createtransaction, getaddressbalances, resync, stopresync, getbalance, getinfo, getwalletseed, getsecret, help, importprivkey, listlockunspent, dumpprivkey, getnewaddress, gettransaction, signmessage, setnetworkstewardvote, getnetworkstewardvote, and there are 14 more RPCs still in process. The completed Lightning Network RPCs are being integrated into PKT Wallet for initial production and additional releases will be forthcoming. Once PKT mining pools integrate Lightning Network payment channels and begin paying miners with over Lightning, the need to fold will go away and mobile wallet technology will become light weight. Lighting Network integration is a big development for the PKT project and ecosystem as a whole, especially with its ability to infinitely increase transaction speeds.
In addition to the AnodeVPN app, the PKT VPN server component can currently be installed and is in testing. This functionality enables VPN servers to provide inventory access on the app and become exit nodes. Several nodes are set up for testing and 3rd party providers can provide VPN support once the official alpha release is live.
The TokenStrike project is in ongoing development. TokenStrike will become PKT’s token issuance protocol, similar to ERC-20 for Ethereum. TokenStrike is designed to make it possible to issue near-zero cost tokens and NFTs without gas fees. This functionality is required so Edge Points can easily tokenize bandwidth and trade tokens in a decentralized bandwidth trading marketplace (PKT DEX). The TokenStrike repo is now public for viewing.
Currently, the TokenStrike data structures for blockchains and data storage are completed. Now the protocol functionality is under development. Functionality for the replication server to track updates from multiple tokens on multiple issuers is also built.
TokenStrike enables atomic swaps and will have nominal Lightning Network integration. For example, TokenStrike must use an HTLC compliant “2 stage commit” process, such that a TokenStrike transaction and a Lightning Network transfer can be dependent on one another, but no other interaction is required.
TokenStrike is designed to relax the requirement that holders of tokens must be secure from attacks by the token issuer. In its place, TokenStrike adds the requirement that any attack by the issuer of a token can be proven to have taken place, such that an issuer who breaks protocol will be discredited and nodes will cease to interact with them until they are manually reset.
Initially mining pools were anticipated to serve a source of authority about time and this functionality was going to be added to the mining pool software. However, since the main mining pools are not using the open source software, TokenStrike will initially rely on replicators as an external source of authority about time. The “sig chain” in TokenStrike is a simple hash chain that contains no work. TokenStrike is working towards completion of Milestone 1 & 2 in Q4 2021.
The 3 major mining pools continue to optimize their infrastructure and support increasing announcement mining adoption. There is a clear difference between Srizbi, which only accepts low work (1024) announcements, requiring miners to push maximum bandwidth, and PKT World and PKT Pool, which accept both high work announcements (2048) as well as low work announcements. This differing structure requires miners to choose between mining into Srizbi first and then listing PKT World and PKT Pool, or mining into PKT World and PKT Pool first and excluding Srizbi, because it doesn’t accept high work announcements. The fundamental difference with low work versus high work is the bandwidth requirement (based on high, versus low(er) bandwidth availability, respectively). For example, mining in a data center can likely allocate the higher bandwidth required by Srizbi. Whereas, miners at the edge, and residential Edge Points may initially have bandwidth upload limitations based on their local provider. If a miner has bandwidth limitations, they will likely choose to favor the higher work pools. However, miners should alternate between pool order configurations to determine which pool yields more over a period of time based on their bandwidth capabilities.
People that are mining using the PKT World wallet are automatically configured to mine at the higher work setup. People that have PKT Pal devices are initially optimized to mine the high work pools, since residential upload bandwidth is generally limited. Since PacketCrypt is a bandwidth-hard proof of work, people are economically incentivized to increase their bandwidth upload speeds, whereby the higher the bandwidth a miner has, the higher the mining yields.
Another notable development is the severe difficulty to start a pool at this current time. The main reason is that the current documentation on how to start a pool has not been updated to include the open source Sprayer Technology that Caleb released in February 2021. As a result, the current pools have incorporated the Sprayer Technology, but those integrations have become intellectual property and the pools generally don’t want to share their code with their competitors. Meanwhile, start-up pools are lost unless they invest significant developer time to work on the codebase.
Since PKT Pal does not operate a pool, it has agreed to rework the PacketCrypt code to fix certain bugs and inefficiencies. By getting this work documented and published, the intent is to help reduce the barrier to entry for new pools which can help to further decentralize block mining. This new pool code is expected to be published in November 2021.
PKTeer pool is also preparing to debut. PKT Pal no longer operates the PKTeer pool, but the new owners are expected to introduce themselves soon. PKTeer pool is expected to operate at 2048 difficulty alongside PKT World and PKT Pool. A launch date has not be provided.
The PKT ecosystem is undergoing continuous wallet development and there are still many more features to implement. The first notable development is the PKT Wallet developments that have been required for the exchange listing wallet integration. Since PKT is a Bitcoin fork, the wallet technology being used in PKT Wallet is integrating relatively easily. However, there are several RPCs that the exchange has required that were not in PKT Wallet, and which needed to be added or modified at the exchange’s request. For example, changes were requested for how wallet change addresses were handled.
As a general statement, from a development standpoint, the current json RPC functionality is working it’s way out the door for the PKT Wallet. The plan is that over the next year all of the wallet RPCs will feed into the Lightning Network daemon, which itself embeds the same wallet. From there everything will migrate over to LND, even if using the wallet purely as a non-Lightning Network wallet.
Leading the development into Lightning Network is the Anode Mobile Wallet, which is being developed and independently funded by Anode. The UX/UI of the wallet is completed and looks fantastic. A few screens are provided here. Wallet functionality is now 50% coded and Lighting Network integration is in testing now.
This Anode Mobile Wallet will initially launch on iOS and then subsequently release on Android. As soon as the AnodeVPN app is ready to launch, a version update will push VPN functionality directly into the wallet app.
Once Lightning Network integration is released publicly, the PKT mining pools will be able to integrate Lightning payment channels and pay mining rewards over Lightning. Once Lightning payment channels are implemented by the PKT mining pools, this will make it easy to mine into any PKT wallet and will eliminate the need for folding.
The PKT World Wallet is a Windows-based desktop wallet that includes a built-in mining function. This makes it possible for people to easily mine on a computer from their home or office. The PKT World Wallet is in continuous development including features and functionality. The major developments are adding a faster wallet backend cross platform. There is also early R&D on mobile support as well as plans for a built-in PKT-paid VPN client function and improvements to the built-in miner.
In September 2021, PKT Pal began shipping the first Edge Point devices worldwide. Additionally, the PKT Pal team has been traveling, introducing both the PKT Cube and the PKT project to people worldwide. The PKT Cube is both making PKT Cash accessible to people who have minimal technical experience and are excited about monetizing their internet, while also creating a tangible, real world use case for blockchain technology, beyond payments and trading. This is an exciting milestone for the PKT project as a whole.
As PKT Cubes are being set up in homes around the world, people are learning about their bandwidth availability and constraints. Since the PacketCrypt mining algorithm is designed to use all available bandwidth, the PKT Cube quickly exposes any bandwidth deficiencies or limitations. This process of PKT Pal working directly with customers has brought forth the realization that customers need the ability to control what times of day they monetize their bandwidth and how much bandwidth they allocate. PKT Pal has now developed a “bandwidth scheduling” feature. This is a simple, but exciting development, because people can now decide when and how much bandwidth they want to monetize. For example, if a family works from home, they may only allocate bandwidth when they are sleeping or out of the house. This type of scheduling will soon launch on the PkteerOS and will be accessible on mobile so bandwidth scheduling can be set even while away from the device.
Optimizing PKT mining yields requires max bandwidth and max CPU power. Low CPU powered devices with high bandwidth will generate low yields and high CPU powered devices with low bandwidth will also yield poorly. The PKT Cube is fitted with a 16 core/32 thread AMD Ryzen 9 5950x processor, and is designed for optimal heat dispersion and whisper quiet operation so it can maximize CPU output in a residential or office location. However, to maximize yields, customers are needing to increase their internet upload or use bandwidth scheduling. By bringing awareness to customer bandwidth availability, the PKT project is achieving its vision towards building a strong edge network.
While the PKT Cube is not likely a product for professional announcement miners, since short-term yields do not compare to large core count CPU racks in a data center. However, PKT Pal is introducing thousands of people to crypto and PKT Cash. For many people, PKT Pal is becoming their first digital wallet or even their first cryptocurrency investment. Also since the PKT Cube is a single purchase, instead of a monthly rental fee to a data center, this makes a PKT Cube a longer term investment. PKT Cube owners are generally hodlers, without needing to sell to cover monthly costs.
The PKT Mini is also in full R&D. This is a smaller form factor, less powerful device with significantly lower price point and lower yields. These devices will have the functionality of PkteerOS and will include access to the DApps being built by the community, including VPN and Bill Pay. The PKT Mini is expected to launch in Q1 2022.
In 2019/2020 hundreds of turnkey PKT mining devices were sold to early community members. These devices were 2 core/4 thread miners that came with PacketCrypt pre-installed. All people had to do was plug the device into the internet and they were immediately mining PKT without any software setup. This easy to use device was instrumental in helping non-technical, early adopters passively accumulate PKT Cash. Most legacy device owners mined between 500k to 2m+ coins. However, in late 2020 the server that communicated with these devices had a catastrophic failure. As a result, anyone that didn’t transfer their coins and didn’t write down their seed has been unable to access their wallets.
PKT Pal has been developing a hack that will enable legacy device owners to export their seed. In order to export a seed, legacy device owners will need to request a USB stick from PKT Pal and plug it into the device. Once the USB stick is connected, owners can visit seed.pktpal.com from the same local internet network that the legacy device is plugged into and enter their Product ID. If someone needs their Product ID, they can contact for PKT Pal for assistance. Once the seed is exported, it can be loaded into a Zulu Wallet, PKT World Wallet or the CLI Wallet. This is a long awaited solution for people that are eager to move their PKT balances to a working wallet.
The Network Steward is an open source technology and infrastructure grant fund built into the PKT blockchain. Anyone in the community can receive grants directly by the Network Steward during each open call. Visit this link to review the funding criteria and request a Network Steward grant. Funding may be granted in advance of a project commencement, and in exchange for subsequent delivery milestones, or retroactively for time and money spent developing open source technology or infrastructure for the PKT Network. Many projects proposals include an administrative fee, along with software development and project management allocations. Any funds earned by the grantee that are not spent on the project deliverables can be spend, at the grantee’s discretion. This means that people can build network technology and use their earnings and profits as they choose.
The Network Steward has also provided funding to a philanthropic organization called NLnet, which is accepting applications here for micro-grants funded by the User Operated Internet Fund. Grants can be up to 50,000 EUR for a first project. The current call for projects is open with a December 1, 2021 deadline. These resources are available to help support the PKT ecosystem or build the PKT roadmap.
Last but not least, please find a status update about the centralized exchange (CEX) listing for $PKT. Listing PKT on a centralized exchange has been more technologically in depth than expected. Even though PKT Wallet is based on Bitcoin, which has streamlined technical integration, the integration process is still underway. It is important to note that the delay in CEX listing is not directly related to technical complications with the integration. Rather, the delay is with the timeline by which the exchange has worked on the technical integration. I have written another blog post which can be read here, specifically detailing the path to CEX listing and associated marketing. I encourage everyone to read it. I know the CEX listing is a very important milestone for the community so I have provided as much detail as possible.
Now that PKT is live trading on PancakeSwap, there is a tremendous opportunity to build excitement and momentum leading into the CEX listing. Additionally, PKT’s current use cases, along with the release of the aforementioned developments over the coming months, will show the world that PKT is building technology that changes people’s lives. While patience does wear thin when things don’t occur in our optimal timeline, what I can say is I am thankful to see unwavering support from the announcement miners, persistence from the PKT developer community and passion from the PKT marketers, traders and hodlers that are building a groundswell of awareness leading into the CEX listing this year. Lets continue to work together in decentralizing access to the internet and getting the next one billion people online.
Sincerely,
Jesse Berger
Community Member
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